


A History of Unpleasantness

by Vitreous_Humor



Series: Set Fire to Our Bed [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Biting, Blood, Body Horror, Consent Issues, Courtly Love, Dark, Death of Queen Victoria, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Face Slapping, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Grief/Mourning, Jealousy, Kink, M/M, Medieval Tournaments, Mentions of Bloodplay, Oral Sex, Other, Possessive Behavior, Sadist Aziraphale, Self-Harm, Sodom and Gomorrah, Threats, Threats of Violence, Trauma, Verbal Abuse, Victorian, War in Heaven (Good Omens), bad kink, clothespins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-10-24 14:10:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20707319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: "You could beat me into the ground, bury me under a thousand years, and I would still love you.”A proper angel or even just a good person, would protest. It was too much. It was past love and into worship, past devotion and into devotional. It was a doorway straight to a kind of hell that Hell itself wouldn't demand. Aziraphale was himself, however, and he liked it very well.*Crowley wants to know where Aziraphale's affinity for sadism comes from, and Aziraphale, unable to deny Crowley much of anything, tells him a story.





	1. Chapter 1

“Why are you _like_ this?” Crowley managed when he could speak again.

“Oh, you're very welcome,” Aziraphale said with more than a hint of smugness.

Crowley made an irritated sound, and Aziraphale obediently returned to rubbing the rope marks on Crowley's arms. They were a pretty insult to Crowley's fair skin, and with as little padding as Crowley kept on, the bruises would likely bloom all shades of purple and yellow and green.

_Perhaps I can convince him to keep them a little longer, _Aziraphale thought. _I would like him wearing those bruises under his clothes for me..._

It was a pleasant fantasy, and Aziraphale indulged it until Crowley turned to face him.

“No, I mean it, angel. How does a prim and proper principality get into this deeply sadistic shit?”

Aziraphale huffed in slight offense, rubbing a little harder than he strictly had to on one deep bruise and making Crowley catch his breath.

“There, that, that's exactly what I'm talking about!” Crowley said, not pulling his arm away. “I could believe that that the proficiency with your nasty little toys comes from... heavenly insight or a lot of reading or something like that, but that little display was something else, wasn't it?”

“Well, then I might well ask where some of your interests come from, mightn't I?” asked Aziraphale, but that hardly made Crowley pause.

“Oh, you didn't know? Mine are practically all from the Fall. Praise, shame, comfort, punishment and forgiveness, I'm pretty sure mine came straight from getting chucked off a cloud by that wanker Michael.”

Aziraphale sighed a little, because he really should have seen that coming. With just a few glaring blind spots, Crowley was one of the most perceptive creatures in the world, and of course he had figured out where all his own favorite games came from. Knowing where they came from made it easier to get more, after all.

“You're a clever one,” he said, dipping his head down to nuzzle Crowley's ruffled hair. “Always so clever.”

Crowley made a pleased noise. He started to sit up, but Aziraphale kept him down with a hand pressed against his shoulder.

“I like the flattery, Aziraphale, but I also want an answer.”

“You sound very demanding right now,” Aziraphale asked with just a touch of menace.

Crowley's breath caught for a moment, and then he brushed Aziraphale's hand away, sitting up with a soft laugh.

“You really are squirmy about this one. I should have asked you ages ago. And no. I'm not demanding, I'm asking. I would never force anything on you, but we both know that not giving an answer is sometimes its own answer.”

Aziraphale gave him a flat look.

“Using truth to bludgeon me into giving you what you want. What a _nice_ trick.”

Crowley grinned, undaunted.

“It's yours, actually. I learned from the best.”

Crowley lapsed into an expectant silence, and Aziraphale took a few deep breaths, leaning back against the headboard. Almost tentatively, he opened his arms, and Crowley came to rest in them, making a soft pleased sound as Aziraphale folded him close. For a moment, he breathed in the demon's scent of snuffed matches, cinnamon and recent sex, letting it soothe him.

“Angel...” Crowley said, sounding suddenly uncertain. “You almost never go in for this mushy stuff on your own. Is this really all right?”

Aziraphale bit back the urge to say something sharp about Crowley getting his way and then fussing over it, and instead feathered his fingers through Crowley's hair.

“It is. And I _do _like cuddling sometimes. But you asked, and I don't think it's a particularly pleasant story. There are parts of it I'm sure you're not going to like.”

Crowley pulled back so he could cup Aziraphale's face in his hands, making Aziraphale meet his eyes squarely.

“All right, I may not like it. But I'll still be here. We'll still be us, and I will still love you. You could beat me into the ground, bury me under a thousand years, and I would still love you.”

A proper angel or even just a good person, would protest. It was too much. It was past love and into worship, past devotion and into devotional. It was a doorway straight to a kind of hell that Hell itself wouldn't demand. Aziraphale was himself, however, and he liked it very well.

“All right,” he said, giving in with a breath and a kiss to Crowley's cheek. “Lie down, darling, and I will tell you a story.”

***

It was just after the third watch that the word came down: pull back, clear the area, and evacuate before dawn- they were sending Gabriel.

From top to bottom, the heavenly hosts knew what that meant. Michael was a general, Uriel was a strategist, Sandalphon was a butcher, but Gabriel was a storm. They couldn't lead a battalion, and they couldn't even really be steered once they were set off. They would leave a path of destruction as wide as their lightning could reach, and it was never clear whether they actually couldn't tell the difference between friend and foe or whether they simply didn't care.

Gabriel was coming at dawn, and that meant that every platoon that didn't want to get wiped off the field by less than friendly fire was advised to get the fuck out.

Aziraphale had sent Naren and Orphur off with their squads, and he crouched on a low rise with Sireniel, Sireniel's squad waiting nervously below. There was a brisk chill to the air, making him fluff out his wings and drape one over Sireniel's shoulders. His sergeant sighed a little, stepping closer, but neither took their eyes off the horizon, where the the sky was just beginning to pink.

Finally, Aziraphale shook his head.

“I'm sorry, sergeant, but I do not believe that Thoriel is coming.”

Sireniel never looked at Aziraphale, their eyes scanning the sky, the distant treeline opposite their position, the wide field in front of them.

“They are,” they said. “They were right behind us.”

“And so were the rebels,” Aziraphale responded, shaking his head. “I am sorry. Come on, we're taking your squad and joining the others.”

Sireniel stiffened, and Aziraphale's heart dropped somewhere into his belly.

_No. Do not make me fight them. I can't, not after everything else. Please..._

Then Aziraphale saw that it wasn't insubordination, it was shock, and he followed Sireniel's gaze.

Coming across the field was a winged figure, flying just thirty feet above the ground. It was Varriel, who had disappeared two weeks ago, and judging by the desiccation of their corpse, they had been dead for a week of that. Wings were the last part of an angel to go, and the rebels had taken advantage of it more than once. The gait was jerky and halting, swaying from side to side, nothing like Varriel's confident swoop, but it was unmistakably the angel they had once known, and clutched in Varriel's arms...

Sireniel uttered a strangled sob, and Aziraphale pressed his lips together so he wouldn't bare his teeth. They could have left Thoriel where they killed them, they could have burned them...

Then the body in Varriel's arms twitched just as the dawning sky darkened and a distant boom of thunder hit the plain.

This time, Aziraphale had to jump to catch Sireniel before they took off, his greater weight bearing his sergeant's body to the ground.

“No,” he said. “If it's not a trap, it's going to put you straight in Gabriel's path...”

Sireniel turned to glare at Aziraphale, and if any of the other lieutenants had seen, Aziraphale would have had no choice but to smite Sireniel for that kind of insubordination, no matter how understandable it was, no matter how little good he knew that pain would have done.

“Lieutenant, that's _Thoriel, _they're mine, they're mine...”

“And you're mine. Go down to your soldiers. Take them after the others.”

Sireniel looked like they wanted to protest, but another boom shook the plain and a faint pulse of lavender light filled the sky. They had let Gabriel fly, and Aziraphale knew how steadily the archangel could cover distance, how remorseless and how untiring they were.

“Get them safe,” Aziraphale said, shoving Sireniel towards the angels waiting below. “Go join the others. Regroup and wait for me, and if I don't show up, report to Hanniel for further instruction.”

Sireniel started to speak, but Aziraphale didn't hear them, throwing himself aloft and arrowing over the field. The sky lit with violet again, and the air seemed to growl. Thoriel started to struggle harder.

If Sireniel moved their angels immediately, they should clear the field with enough time. Aziraphale suspected that it may have already been too late for him and for Thoriel.

_Not as late as it is for poor Varriel, _he thought with a grim humor, and he put it out of his mind.

Aziraphale wasn't fast, but he was strong, and by the time he reached the corpse and the struggling angel, he had built up momentum. He didn't try to halt and instead simply crashed into Thoriel and Varriel both, hard enough that his head snapped forward and then back, and he got a good kick from Thoriel for his efforts. The force shook Thoriel loose from the dead angel, however, and that was worth it.

His wings tangled with Varriel's briefly, and by the time he tugged them apart, they were in free fall, the last of Varriel giving up whatever ghost it was angels had to give up.

By this time, however, Aziraphale had taken hold of Thoriel, fingers digging in hard, dragging him out of Varriel's grasp, just as another boom of thunder shook the world.

“Lieutenant...!”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Aziraphale cried, because electricity was prickling through the air, and flames were already licking up in the south. The plain below them was utterly flat, the forest was crawling with rebels, and the last thing Aziraphale could do was fly them back to join Sireniel and the others because it would take them towards Gabriel as well, and no one sane flew towards _that_.

Thoriel's left wing, he could see had been mangled, and he took a firmer grasp on the angel, dragging him close and he started to fly, not towards the forest, but towards a dry creek bed he could remembered to the west. That he hoped he remembered and not that he had hallucinated out of sheer desperation.

_I am faster than Gabriel, I am, there are species of _starfish _that are faster than Gabriel..._

Aziraphale fixed that thought in his mind, but he felt the way the air was primed to light up with electricity, how nothing above or below felt safe. He heard the archangel's roar behind him; that much lightning running through even Gabriel's near-indestructible frame had to hurt, and Gabriel had never been shy about letting the world know how much they hurt.

Aziraphale's arms ached from holding on to Thoriel, who wasn't much smaller than he was. Aziraphale's wings burned with exhaustion, his skin was faintly scorched, and just as he knew he would fail, just as he knew that he would drop and all that pain and panic would have been for nothing, he saw the creek bed, cutting into the ground like scar. There was no time for relief, no time for anything but a dive. It couldn't be a controlled descent or a gentle one. He dove towards the creek bed, dragging Thoriel bodily with him, and they hit the dirt with stunning force.

Still there was no time to rest, and Thoriel cried out when Aziraphale dragged them up.

“On your feet and crouch down, get _down,” _Aziraphale snarled, all but forcing the wounded angel into position.

He had just enough time to get into position himself, holding Thoriel steady as Gabriel passed over head. There was the open air scent of ozone, the earth-shaking boom of lightning striking the ground, the trees, whatever Gabriel could reach, and Aziraphale closed his eyes, hanging on to Thoriel so tightly his fingers were digging deep into the angel's skin

He counted in his mind the seconds between the clap of thunder and the flash of lightning. At first there was nothing to count at all, and it felt like he had to will his heart to keep beating.

_One._

_One._

The only thing he could hear was the thunder. The only thing he could feel was Thoriel in his arms, clutching him, face buried in his neck, utterly helpless, utterly lost.

_One-two._

_One-two-three-four-five._

Thoriel was whimpering, shaking, and impatiently, without thinking, Aziraphale bit him on the ear, a sharp and savage nip that drew blood. It was cruel, but it made Thoriel still, and then, Aziraphale realized it was over. Gabriel had passed over them, leaving star-like patterns on the singed grass, a fire roaring elsewhere, but the archangel was no longer overhead, instead heading for the forest where they would do the most damage.

Aziraphale groaned softly, sprawling flat on the raw earth of the creek bed, dragging Thoriel with them.

_I cannot believe that worked, _Aziraphale thought in a daze.

He felt as blank as a piece of paper, as empty as the sky above him. He might have stayed there for good long while if he hadn't realized that Thoriel was crying, their face buried in Aziraphale's shoulder.

“Oh!” he said in dismay. “Oh, I'm so sorry, are you-”

Of course he was hurt, and Aziraphale realized with a wince that at least some of those hurts he had caused. His strike against Varriel could break bones, and his landing in the creek bed was no gentler.

Aziraphale tried to rise, but Thoriel clung to him. It took Aziraphale a few moments to realize that the other angel was speaking, or trying to.

“-m sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...”

Thoriel sounded utterly miserable, and Aziraphale''s heart squeezed tight.

“No, no, darling, nothing to be sorry about, I promise,” he murmured soothingly.

Thoriel shook his head wildly, and when Aziraphale pressed his hand against his chest, Thoriel's heart was beating like a rabbit's, so fast it was almost a buzz.

“I didn't mean to get- I didn't mean to, I was following as best I could, but-”

“Darling, it wasn't your fault,” Aziraphale said, pulling Thoriel close because he didn't know what else to do. No one had ever taught him this. It was strange and slightly uncomfortable and downright weird for the host, but he wanted to make Thoriel stop shuddering in this awful way. For some reason, this was the only thing he could think of.

“I-”

“Quiet,” Aziraphale said firmly. “You must be quiet now. No more apologies, please. Let me look at you.”

That at least made Thoriel nod, kneeling back on his heels so that Aziraphale could see how bad the damage was.

It was bad. Aziraphale pieced the story together as he ran his hands over Thoriel's body, stretching his arms as far as they would go, tracing fingers over ribs that were likely broken, wincing at evil puncture wounds that would make moving a nightmare. Thoriel's wings had taken the worst of it. Aziraphale tried to stretch out the right one, his breath catching as Thoriel moaned.

“It's all right,” he said. “I just need to look, to see if I can make it better, it's all right.”

The words or at least Aziraphale's tone calmed Thoriel, and they only whimpered softly as Aziraphale stretched his wing out. It was a mess, feathers sheared away with something too dull for the job, and blood staining the roots, but Aziraphale could heal it.

The left wing was worse, however, still bearing most of its feathers, but the fine bones were crumpled and broken in more places than Aziraphale could count.

“If I try to heal this, I'll be making a bigger mess for a real healer,” Aziraphale said apologetically. “I'm sorry. It'll have to keep until we get back.”

Thoriel, paler than they had been, nodded, and Aziraphale swallowed a little when he saw that they were still knelt up, back straight, head down, waiting for Aziraphale's next orders.

_I could tell them to rise and to try to fly on those wings, _came a dark voice from inside him, and Aziraphale felt as if he had been punched in the chest He didn't want to think about where that voice had come from, what poison had gotten into him, weak cracked thing he was.

Instead he pulled Thoriel with him to the side of the creek bed, leaning against the bare earth and pulling Thoriel into his arms.

“I'm going to heal you as best I can, and then we are going to rest. The rebels won't coming back this way after the host sent Gabriel through. Then I'm afraid we're going to have to get up and make our way back to friendly lines, but I'll be with you. I won't let anything happen to you.”

Thoriel nodded without looking up, but Aziraphale could feel the way their body relaxed, their head on Aziraphale's shoulder.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” they said softly, and Aziraphale felt that something stir inside him again, that curiosity, that strange heat, that something that felt more like love than he thought it should.

_I'm made for love, _ he thought uncertainly. _Of course I love them._

He put the rest out of his mind, concentrating on healing Thoriel's hurts as best he could. He wasn't a bad field medic, and he could make the march back much easier.

He came to Thoriel's ear, shivering a little when he saw the deep cut that might turn into a notch without attention. The blood drying there was the same as the blood he could still very faintly taste on his own teeth.

He raised his hand, and then, for reasons he didn't understand, he left it unhealed.

***

Crowley pushed a little closer into his arms, and Aziraphale held him tighter, burying his face in Crowley's hair.

“Well, you asked,” he said, faintly defensive, but Crowley shook his head.

“You don't bite _me.”_

Aziraphale looked down at the demon in his arms.

“I do. I do bite you sometimes.”

“Not a lot.”

“Crowley? Are you sulking because you think I want to bite someone else more than I want to bite you?”

“Nmmf.”

Aziraphale considered his demon for a moment. There were a good dozen responsible and satisfactory ways to handle this. He could say that beyond that moment, Thoriel had never really stirred anything in him. He could say say that he could spend years and years playing with Crowley and never reach an end to what he wanted to do with them. He could simply murmur in Crowley's ear how much he loved him, how that beat everything else right into the ground, and how it wouldn't matter if he never got to lay a single finger on Crowley again, that would never change. It was all very true.

Instead, he gently lifted Crowley up until he was sitting opposite, naked to Aziraphale's clothed, yellow eyes faintly mutinous, faintly lost, and chin set in a defiance that made Aziraphale sigh with pleasure.

Aziraphale ran his fingertips down Crowley's bare chest before circling a spot right above his right nipple and leaning in.

He lapped at the spot first, almost prim, waiting until Crowley relaxed into it in spite of himself. Then he grazed his teeth over Crowley's skin, and just when Crowley was vibrating fit to burst, he sank his teeth in with a viciousness that felt like love. There was no gentleness at all, no easing Crowley into it, and Crowley's hands came up to tangle in Aziraphale's hair, grabbing great handfuls of blond curls and tugging in panic.

Aziraphale didn't pull back, didn't restrain himself in the least. Of _course _he wanted to bite Crowley. He wanted him like this all the time, utterly lost and overwhelmed, hanging on to him as if he were drowning. Aziraphale jerked his head left and right, making Crowley shriek, and then he did it again for good measure before letting go.

When he finally pulled back, the bite mark was already purple and swelling up from Crowley's skin, and Crowley slumped back against the headboard, breathing hard and eyes wet.

“Fucking _angel,” _Crowley swore helplessly, and then he let Aziraphale pull him into his arms again.

Aziraphale passed his thumb over the bite mark, holding back the urge to press against it, and Crowley grumbled. Aziraphale rather thought he wouldn't be questioning how much he wanted to bite him any time soon.

“So what's the rest of it?”

“The... rest?”

One gold eye opened to regard him with lazy knowledge.

“Oh yes, angel. I want the rest of it. Don't think I'm content with just that little story. I know there's more.”

“Insatiable darling,” Aziraphale said, brushing a kiss over Crowley's forehead. “All right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *So yeah, Aziraphale is not a very good soldier, but neither is anyone else. They were all made for different things, and suddenly, whoops, here's a war, good luck, kiddos!
> 
> *I have a not entirely wholesome interest in this Gabriel. There is something fucked _up_ about this one.
> 
> *In the present day, Thoriel and Sireniel, first seen in Everyday Miracles, are having a much better time. 
> 
> *So I almost bit a stranger in a mosh pit once. It's a weird instinct, really. 
> 
> *Someday, I will get to take the 'possessive behavior' tag out of rotation. Today is not that day.
> 
> *Still trying to figure out if this is complete or not. I know that properly, there's a Sodom and Gomorrah chapter and a Victorian chapter at the very least.


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale insisted on making a cup of tea, and then he insisted on tidying up the bedroom a little. Crowley was tolerant enough about it until he realized that Aziraphale intended to do it by hand, and then he dragged him back to bed with a gently reprimanding sound

Aziraphale started to protest, but then Crowley tumbled into his arms, planting a line of sweet soft kisses carefully along Aziraphale's jaw.

“Come on,” he said softly. “You already started, just let me have another.”

“And you'll be content with that?”

Crowley's grin was lopsided and utterly dear to Aziraphale. When Crowley smiled like that, Aziraphale thought he might burn down the entire world to keep Crowley warm.

“Oh, not at all. But I _want_ it. I want it so, angel, won't you give it to me?”

“Of course I will,” Aziraphale said with a sigh. “Though I don't understand, honestly. They're not _nice _stories.”

Crowley touched the bite mark so recently left on his chest, the imprint of Azirpahale's teeth still livid, the purple bruising darkening almost to black.

“I don't like _nice_,” he said. “I like you.”

Aziraphale huffed a little at that.

“I _am _nice.”

Crowley looked at him with something like pity and adoration combined.

“Oh, angel. You're brave and intelligent and beautiful. You've got shockingly good taste in lovers and bad taste in clothing, and you've spent every moment on this planet loving it like no one else ever could. You're so terribly kind. And you're also a sadistic prick when the mood takes you, petty as hell, and on occasion smug enough that I could slap you. You're not _nice.”_

“Plenty of people think I'm nice.”

“Plenty of people are very wrong,” Crowley said with a grin. “Now. Story time.”

“You didn't even say please,” Aziraphale said, struggling to hang on to whatever high ground he could muster. “All right. Fine.”

***

The sun had set hours ago, but the cities on the plain were lit up as bright as day, the flaming swords of the host brighter than the torches, brighter than bonfires, brighter than anything yet seen in the world. For hours, the angels had hovered like stars above the city, and all the people below came out to marvel at them.

Then had come the tolling of the great bell. As one, the angels fell on the people below them, and the screams rose up to the stars that had been blotted out by the great light of Heaven.

Somehow, until that very moment, until the bell rang and he fell towards the earth with his siblings, Aziraphale thought that it would all be called off. A little extreme, perhaps, to summon up the host to scare four mortal cities, but that was the way of it sometimes. She worked in mysterious ways. His was not question why.

Then he heard the screams, saw the first ziggurats fall, and he knew he had to work very, very hard not to question why, because the last angels to question why, well, they weren't angels anymore.

Aziraphale stood on the roof of a weaver's house, staring out over the district that was his... his _responsibility_. The weaver and her children were under his feet, the little boy crying, his mother covering their faces with her shawl. She was holding him too tight while clutching her daughter's hand in her own. They were trying to pray,he realized, but all that came out of them was the word _why._

He felt as if he had somehow become split from his own corporation. At once, he was standing on the weaver's roof, aching with her love for her babies, and at the same time he was a million miles away in some vast star field, thrown so far that he could barely hear the roar of the flames that took Gomorrah or the crumbling of the great walled gardens of Admah.

_They can't, _ he thought numbly. _We can't..._

“Oh, Aziraphale, have you not even started yet?”

He looked up to see Sandalphon hovering above him, a concerned look on his round face. The other angel's sword burned with a blue flame, hot enough to cauterize a wound if it dealt anything but killing blows.

“I,” Aziraphale said, and he couldn't find any further words because the weaver had started to cry.

“You mustn't fall behind,” Sandalphon said, anxious the way they could be sometimes. “Are you quite well? You are looking a little peaked.”

It was outlandish. They might have been back in Heaven at one of those mixers that Aziraphale hated so very much. They might not be killing some thirty thousand people at all.

Sandalphon's brows knit together in worry, and he came to stand on the roof next to Aziraphale.

“You really don't look well,” Sandalphon said. “You ought to have asked Michael if you could sit this one out...”

“I should have, I really... should have,” Aziraphale said faintly. In the house underneath him, the girl had broken away from her mother. She went to the kitchen to retrieve their biggest knife It looked enormous in her hand. It would last precisely no time at all against Aziraphale's borrowed flaming sword. He thought he had gotten so lucky when Hanniel had turned up slightly cursed after a botched blessing in Zoam, and he could borrow theirs for the day.

Sandalphon nodded as if coming to a decision.

“Look, just stay here, and I'll take care of your section for you, all right? No one need know, I'm playing clean-up all day, after all. No one's going to notice if I clean up your area a little early, will they? It'll be fine, no harm at all.”

“No!” Aziraphale cried out. He reached out, grabbing Sandalphon's wrist before the other angel could take flight.

Sandalphon turned back to look at them quizzically.

“What's the matter? Done is done, you know. No one will care as long as-”

“Don't do it,” Aziraphale said, his voice rising. “Don't, leave them alone...!”

Sandalphon frowned at him, looking more worried than before.

“Aziraphale, are you _well? _You look frightened. It's all right. Don't worry. You can come with me, you'll see that I won't make a botch of things...”

Hanniel's sword was in his hand, the flame hotter than the paltry heat it had put out before. Sandalphon was looking straight at him and they would still never see it coming. Instead Sandalphon was only looking at him with concern. With love.

Even if two dark shadows hadn't fallen over them, Aziraphale wasn't sure he could have done it, and he knew himself for a coward.

“What's all this?” demanded Michael, hovering some ten feet up. Their eyes were very stern, and the sword in their hand rippling with a white heat that distorted the air around it. By their side was Uriel, the trident they preferred slung over one shoulder. Uriel frowned as if this entire matter was threatening to put them behind schedule.

Sandalphon tried to wave them away.

“It's nothing, General. Just discussing some strategy with the lieutenant here...”

“I won't do it,” Aziraphale burst out. “I won't. I can't.”

He drained the last of the fire from the sword and let it clatter to the tile roof at his feet. Below, the weaver and her children flinched. He realized they could hear every word of this.

“Lieutenant, pick that up,” snapped Michael, outraged. “Pick it up at once, and resume your duty.”

“I _can't_,” Aziraphale repeated.

“They're sick,” Sandalphon said anxiously. “They were just standing there when I came up, I said they looked rather pale.”

“They look fine to me,” Michael started, but then Uriel spoke up.

“Lieutenant, pick up your sword,” Uriel said. “I am sending you to Mount Hermon at once to keep eyes on the Archangel Gabriel. Wait for further instructions there.”

There was already a part of him that knew that the right thing, the _only_ right thing, was to stay where he was. If he could not pick up a sword against his siblings, he could at least refuse to go, to be as immovable a force as he knew how to be, to do or say anything that might give the host a single moment's worth of doubt, even if they cut him down for it immediately after.

At the same time, he knew it was no good, that no lives could be saved, and that was all the excuse his cowardly heart needed to snatch up his sword and to throw himself aloft, winging his way towards the mountain range.

“They looked just fine to me,” he heard Michael say. “They were _malingering...”_

“It doesn't matter,” Uriel replied. “We haven't got time for-”

Then he was in the wind, and he could blessedly hear no more.

***

The peak of Mount Hermon was wreathed in clouds, and when Aziraphale came down through them, he found the Archangel Gabriel pacing along the highest ridge. The earth around the archangel was scraped and torn, the trees pulled up by the roots and thrown down the slope, the grass trampled flat. When Aziraphale hesitated to land, Gabriel looked up at him with wide and hopeful eyes.

“Do they need me?” Gabriel asked. “Have they sent for me?”

“No, Gabriel,” Aziraphale said, landing a short distance away. “They don't need you at all.”

It was hard sometimes to remember that Gabriel was an archangel, or at least, it was hard to remember that they were an archangel like Michael or Uriel were. Like their closest siblings, Gabriel radiated power, but since the war, the rumor went, there was something missing, some control or focus that had been there once and now was lost.

“Oh,” they said, shuffling a bare foot through the raw earth. “All right.”

Gabriel looked down, abashed and oddly small despite their size and height. Aziraphale realized through the blessed cold and distance that had settled over him during his flight from the plain that he had been cruel. It shouldn't have been possible for a principality to hurt an archangel.

“They sent me to keep an eye on you,” Aziraphale said.

The air still prickled around Gabriel, a threat of lightning that had never entirely gone away after the war, even when they were calm.

“Oh,” Gabriel repeated.

He looked, Aziraphale thought, ashamed, and Aziraphale couldn't help his flash of irritation. People were dying for some metric that they couldn't even reckon, and the _Archangel Gabriel _stood on a mountaintop feeling badly about himself.

Aziraphale took a deep breath, shaking his head, trying to keep his face utterly impassive. It wasn't as if he was any better. If he was fair, he should be just as disgusted with himself as he was with Gabriel. He had to be fair. Angels were always fair.

He had just about managed to stomp down on his temper when Gabriel turned towards the east, where the cities were falling.

“Are we the only ones not there?” Gabriel asked

“No,” Aziraphale said automatically. “There's a skeleton crew in Heaven. A fair number are still in East Africa dealing with that plague. Some are on special assignment in-”

“We should be there, shouldn't we? We're- everyone's there. They might need our _help...”_

_A large kitchen knife clutched in a small hand._

Aziraphale wasn't feeling very fair.

“Obviously they do not,” he snapped.

If Gabriel had snapped back, if one those enormous shade-gray wings had snapped out to deal Aziraphale a stunning blow, if Gabriel's lightning had licked out in fury, that would have been the end of it. Instead, Gabriel flinched, not looking at Aziraphale.

“I guess you're right.”

“I _am _right,” Aziraphale said recklessly. “You were stationed here, and they sent me to make sure that you stayed. To make sure that you did not do anything _foolish.”_

_Foolish _was one of Michael's words. They used it like a shard of metal flung so hard it could embed in bone, echoing pain in ways large and small for ages to come. Aziraphale wasn't Michael, but Gabriel shivered as if he was.

“I won't.”

“Obviously that's not what they believe,” Aziraphale said. He felt warm for the first time all night. “Obviously, they are concerned that they cannot let you alone.”

“I _told _ Michael I was fine,” Gabriel protested. “I told them that I wouldn't.”

Aziraphale briefly wondered wouldn't _what, _ but in truth, he didn't care. Right now, the only things he cared about were how hard his heart was beating in his chest, the tender line of Gabriel's lips, the way Gabriel's shoulders curved in, Gabriel's eyes that were so very _lost._

“Michael doesn't believe you,” Aziraphale lied. He wasn't a particularly good liar, but he had found that he didn't have to be for most angels. He certainly didn't have to be for Gabriel, whose dread was as plain on their face as their extraordinary eyes.

“Michael said-”

“Oh, do shut _up, _archangel,” Aziraphale snarled.

It should have been too much. It should have gotten him struck by lightning on the spot, and then they would have swept up the little pile of ashes that would be all that remained of his corporation and demoted them down to something appropriate- a dustbin, say, or a lost single slipper.

Instead, Gabriel's mouth snapped shut so hard Aziraphale heard their teeth click, and the archangel's full attention fell on Aziraphale like a terrible velvet weight. In that moment, there was nothing in the world for Gabriel but Aziraphale, and it should have been terrifying. It should have been too much.

As he was, Aziraphale liked it just fine.

“Kneel,” Aziraphale breathed, and immediately, Gabriel fell onto their knees.

“Tell me,” Gabriel said desperately. “Just tell me, I will, I promise I will...”

“Of course you will. Of _course_ you will. You're good, aren't you?”

“Yes. Yes. I am. Let me show you. I still _am.”_

Aziraphale raised his hand. It didn't feel like a part of him, not until he cupped Gabriel's face, curling his palm momentarily on Gabriel's jaw, tracing the ball of his thumb over Gabriel's lips. Gabriel didn't sigh or draw back, only continued watching Aziraphale with that same desperation and need. Aziraphale took a deep breath, drew back his hand, and cracked it across Gabriel's face as hard as he could.

It was something like slapping a brick wall. The pain stung his palm, the impact traveled all the way up to his shoulder, and Gabriel's head only tilted a quarter of an inch. Despite that, there was a flaming red hand print on Gabriel's cheek and a bright sheen of wetness in their eyes.

“Okay,” Gabriel said, their voice utterly small. “Are you going to do that again?”

Aziraphale nodded, and this time he struck Gabriel twice, the second time drawing a soft gasp from the archangel. He had split Gabriel's lip, spilling blood down Gabriel's chin. Angel's blood was garnet-red veined with gold; it looked precious and rare dripping into the stony ground, turning the dust to mud.

“I don't _like_ this,” Gabriel said.

“That's fine,” Aziraphale said, and hit them again.

Aziraphale might have moved on to something even more dangerous if just then he hadn't been hit by a tidal wave of love, Gabriel's for him.

_I love you, I love you, thank you, thank you, thank you for not leaving me alone, thank you for saying I'm good, thank you, I love you, I love you, thank you for looking at me, no one looks at me any more, thank you, thank you, I love you..._

Aziraphale felt as if Gabriel had struck him with lightning after all. He staggered back, eyes wide, and a confused self-loathing threatened to drown him until he got himself back under control.

Gabriel looked at him hopefully.

“I don't like this, but I don't mind-”

“No. No. We're done. _I'm _done”

When Gabriel didn't stand up, Aziraphale knelt down before him. Kneeling, he was again shorter than the archangel. He felt like a supplicant, but neither plea for forgiveness nor explanation for his wrongdoing would come

Instead, he snapped his fingers for a damp cloth and dabbed it gently against the archangel's split lip, sponging away the holy blood, dabbing with care at the torn skin.

“I could heal it right away,” offered Gabriel, and Aziraphale winced at how eager they were to please. He had no right to be disgusted by it. He still was.

“No, don't,” Aziraphale said. “Just let it heal on its own.”

“Okay,” Gabriel said, and he let Aziraphale guide him to his feet.

They ended up perched next to one another on the ledge facing east towards the plain Throughout the night, they could hear the distant booms of the host bringing down the cities one by one, and when Aziraphale could not bear it, he thought instead of Gabriel's beautiful blood sliding down his chin and dripping down onto the common dirt.

***

“Do you expect me to be sorry for that prick Gabriel? Because I will tell you right now, I'm _not.”_

Aziraphale laughed, a touch hollow.

“No, dear, I did not expect that.”

He could feel the tension wound through Crowley's body in his arms. Crowley hadn't moved at all, but he felt heavier now, denser, as if primed for some kind of disaster.

“You didn't like that he loved you,” Crowley said finally.

“I didn't like _him. _His love felt like... an imposition.”

Crowley glanced up at him.

“Liar,” he pointed out calmly.

Aziraphale winced

“His love felt like a burden.”

“Liar again.”

The worst part was that there was no accusation in Crowley's voice. There was only a calm statement of fact that dug into Aziraphale's heart.

“It felt cheap,” Aziraphale said finally. “It felt... like he would have given it to anyone. That he was giving it to me because I just happened to be there. I didn't want something so very cheap and easy to get.”

Crowley curled more tightly in his arms.

“_I_ was easy to get”

It took a moment for Aziraphale to understand the words, and another moment to tumble Crowley onto his back on the bed. He pinned him to place with his hands heavy on Crowley's shoulders, and one knee pressed threateningly between Crowley's legs. When Crowley opened his mouth, Aziraphale ground down with his knee and Crowley shut up.

“Crowley... do you think you're like the Archangel Gabriel?”

“No, of course I fucking don't...”

Crowley had a gift for mirrors. He could think that Gabriel was utter filth, the lowest and worst of all Her creations, built wrong, grown flawed, and monstrous with his own ego. At the same time, Crowley could also believe that Gabriel was a bright star compared to where and what Crowley himself was.

“_You, _darling boy, were the most difficult thing I have ever wanted. There is nothing easy about you.”

“Any time, angel,” Crowley said softly, eyes shining. “Any time, you could have had me. You knew that, didn't you? Must have done. I have never been able to play hard to get with you-”

He would have said more, but Aziraphale's knee pressed down harder, and he shut up.

“You're _different_,” Aziraphale said. “You could have thrown yourself after every demon in Hell, and I would still want you. I don't care what you did for love or who you needed before me. What I care about, Crowley, is that I'm the one you love and want now. That's _all _I care about. Tell me you understand, or I will hurt you very badly.”

He told himself he wouldn't have. He knew he couldn't convince Crowley with hurt, no matter how inventive he got.

_No, but I could start there. He's so much softer after he's been hurt, hears what I have to tell him so much more clearly..._

Fortunately Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale pulled away, letting Crowley clamber up to straddle his hips as he sat with his back against the headboard. Aziraphale sighed, and wrapped his arms around Crowley's thin body as Crowley tucked his head under Aziraphale's chin.

“Are you tired of stories yet, Crowley?”

“No. I want more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Didn't know before I wrote this that there were four cities on the plain that fell in total, not just Sodom and Gomorrah. 
> 
> *I'm pretty amused that Crowley, to some extent, thinks that all of these stories are related to him in some way. They are, kind of, but man. Crowley. 
> 
> *One constant in this series is that Aziraphale can't tolerate Crowley speaking badly of himself. 
> 
> *Okay, if I wrote this one, I have to write the Victorian chapter, so consider this work incomplete until then.
> 
> *Right now, Gabriel is a big hollow place waiting to be filled. I think Aziraphale, if he had stayed in Heaven and been allowed that kind of access, could have quite ruined an archangel. By the time the nullpocalypse starts, Heaven's filled that void with a book on management tips from the early aughts and ruined them all on their own.


	3. Chapter 3

_December 1899_

It was a bastard of a winter, nothing but sleet and snow from the last days of October. Many of Aziraphale's acquaintances had relocated to points south and tropical for the season, and he would be of a mind to join them if he didn't have responsibilities in London.

Of course, it was unclear what responsibilities those might be when the one whose wiles he was meant to be thwarting had entirely disappeared.

_Thirty years, _Aziraphale thought, taking a rather disconsolate sip of his brandy. _What foolishness. Thirty years without so much as a postcard. How dreadfully rude. _

It was fine to think of Crowley as rude. As long as he could think of Crowley as rude, it meant that he didn't have to think of other things. If he thought about Crowley's utterly deplorable manners and lack of _professional courtesy_, he didn't have to think about St. James Park and their last meeting.

Aziraphale was quite good about not thinking of things, so Crowley was rude and inconsiderate, and whenever he turned up again, which of course would be soon, Aziraphale intended to let him know straightaway. It simply wasn't done to leave your colleague on tenterhooks, wondering where in the dickens you had disappeared to, if you were hurt, if you had managed to find that _insurance_ you were you so blessed convinced you needed.

Rude.

He finished the brandy more quickly than he expected, and he was just waving down the server for another when the majordomo, a slender man with an impeccable beard, appeared at his elbow.

“Excuse me, Elizabeth, but there is a guest waiting for you in the Green Room.”

“Oh, is there?” Aziraphale asked vaguely. “Thank you so much, Thomasina.”

He rose to his feet, wondering who it would be. Plenty of gentlemen came to the club for business as well as pleasure, and Elizabeth Fell was known for his philanthropy and his interest in funding new humanitarian endeavors.

_I should likely be quite pleased to do some good tonight, _ he thought. _Get my mind off how very rude demons can be._

The Green Room was one of several salons kept for private meetings. He had been told he was expected, so Aziraphale didn't bother to knock and instead opened the door and stepped inside. The greeting on his lips died away as he registered a familiar tall, lean figure silhouetted in front of the fire.

“Oh!” he said softly. He knew there was a rather silly grin on his face, and he would sober up in a moment, but right now, Aziraphale was too consumed with relief and pleasure to care. He let the door close behind him, stepping towards Crowley with his hand reaching for his friend, and then the figure on the hearth staggered a little as they turned towards him.

“Satan's fucking _balls_...”

The relief turned to ice, was replaced for a split second with confusion, and then was entirely supplanted by a fury he had only felt a few times in his long life.

Aziraphale crossed the room and seized the thin demon in front of him by the throat. The demon made a gurgling noise when Aziraphale's hand tightened and lifted, bringing them effortlessly up on the toes of their well-shined shoes.

“Who in the name of Heaven are you?” Aziraphale demanded.

The demon gasped, slapping at Aziraphale's hand, and Aziraphale took the time to study them. They were a handsome thing, tall and thin like Crowley was, hair dark like expensive mink, and with a softness to their features that made them look oddly young and wistful.

It was the dark glasses they wore, Aziraphale thought, that made it so easy to mistake them for Crowley in the moment, glasses that were now slipping down the demon's nose as they struggled for breath.

“I asked you a question,” Aziraphale asked, squeezing the demon's throat a little tighter, angry beyond all good reason that this demon wasn't Crowley, had dared for a moment to make Aziraphale think they were.

A moment before the demon would have passed out, Aziraphale's hand opened, and the demon dropped in a pile of loose limbs and gasps to the ground.

“You... you...”

“No, that's not what I asked,” Aziraphale said coldly.

There was a letter opener on the desk next to him, and Aziraphale picked it up, absently appreciating the comfortable weight of it in his hand before he blessed it. It wasn't sharp, but when one was as strong as Aziraphale was, it didn't have to be.

He tangled his fingers in the demon's hair, jerking their face up and pressing the point of the knife against the soft flesh under their chin.

“Your name, please,” he repeated.

“Fairest, I bring you greetings from below and dishonor for the slaying of the demon Crowley...”

The demon cried out in panic and pain as the knife dug hard into their throat, coming just shy of breaking their skin.

Aziraphale's mind whirled. They thought he had killed Crowley? That meant that Crowley wasn't in safe in hell, it meant that...

_No. _

He wasn't going to think that.

Deliberately, he released the demon, letting them drop to the ground again. Beyond the door, someone was asking if everything was all right, and he responded without taking his eyes away from the demon he was already beginning to think of as the _upstart_.

“Everything's quite well,” he called back. “Only please send to the kitchen for a cup of tea with a spot of something soothing in it. My guest seems to have some trouble with his throat.”

The demon climbed to their feet, straightening up with a hand to their bruising neck while watching Aziraphale warily. Aziraphale sighed because this wasn't getting them anywhere.

He took a seat in one of the wingback chairs by the fire, gesturing towards the other.

“Please sit,” he said, his tone making it very clear that the please was only because he preferred to be polite. He nodded when the demon did as he said, and then he made himself smile.

“All right,” he said. “From the top, shall we?”

***

The demon's name was Medoc, and he, as it turned out, was meant to be Crowley's replacement. He was thin and tall, but unlike Crowley who could sell it as menacing, Medoc looked more like he had been assembled out of spare parts and hope, without any care at all. His clothes were a bit too new, making him look like a tourist, and Aziraphale had always had a native Londoner's disdain for tourists. He looked almost achingly young as he fiddled with the cup of tea with brandy that the house had brought for him.

“You,” said Aziraphale, flat and disbelieving. “_You _are the one they decided would replace the Serpent of Eden.”

Medoc sat up straighter in the armchair like a schoolboy whose honor had been impugned.

“Fairest-”

“No. No one uses those ridiculous terms any more. I am hardly going to call you _fallen, _and I certainly do not want you to call me _fairest.”_

“What should I use instead?”

Aziraphale did not stop to think about it.

“_Angel _will do,” he said. “They made you take this job because no one else would. And yet you came here looking for me. Why?”

Medoc tilted his chin up with a hint of defiance.

“Because if you could kill the Serpent of Eden, you would likely kill me immediately if you came across me unawares, wouldn't you?”

“And so you decided to come looking for me so I could kill you sooner? Foolish.”

Unexpectedly, Medoc grinned.

“You haven't killed me yet, have you?”

“Yet,” Aziraphale answered, but he was listening now.

“I want to deal,” said Medoc. “I'm like Crowley, a tempter, and, angel, I am good at my job.”

That cockiness, that was familiar, and Aziraphale swallowed against the pain of how much he _missed_ Crowley, how all of that... all of that _emotion _ in him that he wouldn't name had nowhere to go now. What in Heaven's name was he meant to do with it all...?

“Are you?” Aziraphale managed.

“I am,” said Medoc, leaning closer. “Let me go my own way in London. Let me do the temptations I need to stay on my employer's good side. It's only a very small amount of wickedness, isn't it?”

“And what do you propose to offer me in return?”

Medoc's smile grew warmer, and he stood up from his chair. Deliberately, he stepped closer to Aziraphale, possessed of a kind of loose-limbed grace he hadn't displayed before. He placed both hands on the arms of Aziraphale's chair and he leaned into the angel's space.

“I can be very... very sweet for you,” Medoc offered. “Wouldn't you like to see how _sweet_ I can be?”

Slowly, Medoc reached a gentle finger to fondle the knot of Aziraphale's silk cravat. He hooked a finger underneath it and pulled him closer, so close that Aziraphale could see himself reflected in Medoc's ridiculous dark glasses, could smell the demon's stinging scent of cayenne pepper and bonfires. Another moment and Medoc would be in his lap.

“Really?” asked Aziraphale dryly. He pushed Medoc back, standing up. “Would you also like to tell me how big I am and how you would do it for free if you could?”

“Would that work?” asked Medoc, and then he remembered himself, frowning as Aziraphale brushed past him. “Wait, I can do better...”

“I highly doubt it,” Aziraphale said.. “Have you only practiced your skills on other demons?”

Medoc scowled, and Aziraphale knew he was right. His words grew pointed and cold.

“Fucking for survival and tempting someone who is meant to be incorruptible are two very different things. I have spent thousands of years with the Serpent of Eden, and, believe me, my boy, _you are not him.”_

He hadn't meant to do it. With those last four words, he could feel the fury and the fear and grief and pain that had been simmering in him come up all at once, and with nothing else he could do with it, he simply flung it at the nearest available target. Medoc fell back into the chair that Aziraphale had just vacated, obviously stunned with his mouth hanging over and twin runnels of tears coming from under his dark glasses.

“What _is _that?” he asked, sounding lost and small. “Why did...?”

He trailed off, and Aziraphale took a careful breath and then another one.

“As I said, you are no Serpent of Eden.”

But it hardly mattered, did it, when there wasn't a Crowley around at all? He knew he would have to be careful about his other emotions, but he knew that Medoc couldn't sense love anymore than Crowley could. The love -_and it was love, wasn't it, it had been for such a long time now, love for the only one in all of Creation who knew what the long watch on Earth was like, who was the only one who could make the minutes run a little faster- _ the love threatened to drown him, and he knew that he would die if he had no place to put it.

He looked Medoc, who had pulled his glasses off to wipe angrily at his tears. There was something overgrown about him, ungainly, and when he glanced up at Aziraphale, Aziraphale saw eyes so dark they were black, and that blackness covered the pupil, the iris and the white all alike. Medoc's startled look, the darkness of his eyes and the length of his limbs all together. made Aziraphale blink.

“You're a _rabbit_,” he said in surprise.

“Hare, actually,” Medoc said, putting his glasses back on sullenly. “No one can tell the difference.”

Aziraphale ignored him, looking Medoc over carefully before nodding. It would do until he could figure things out, find a way to mend the inexplicable way his heart felt torn in two.

Instead of leaving, he came to stand in front of Medoc, studying the demon's face, how broad his shoulders were, the way his legs stretched out in front of him.

“What?” asked Medoc, looking around for the letter opener. The bruise that Aziraphale had given him under the chin was already an ugly thing.

“Tell me,” Aziraphale said, reaching down to ruffle Medoc's dark hair, “can you change this to red?”

***

Aziraphale called it love because he had no idea what else to call it, and it never worked as well as he felt it ought to.

At the very bottom of it, Medoc made a piss-poor Crowley, no matter how hard he tried, and bless him, he _did_ try. He was only ever awkward in red hair, he had no talent for things like dinner or walks at Vauxhall, and it was simply not to be borne having him in the bookshop.

So that left one thing, and Aziraphale called it love, and after a few months, Medoc, wide-eyed, shaking, needy and entirely addicted, started to call it that as well.

“I read his reports on you,” Medoc said one spring evening in 1900. He was sitting on the desk at his fine residence in Mayfair, his legs dangling over the edge like a doll. He was bare to the waist, and the chill drifting in from the open window sent gooseflesh up and down his arms.

“Did he speak of me often?” Aziraphale asked, setting his bag next to Medoc's hip. When Medoc turned his head to look, Aziraphale touched his chin to bring his face forward again. He ignored the way Medoc leaned into the touch.

“No. He was... impressed with you. Afraid of you, I think. He said you were strange even by Heaven's standards, and that time on Earth had made you... well, a little more like us.”

“Did he.”

He wondered if those had been some of the reports that he and Crowley had written together on opposite sides of a table or desk in some out-of-the-way location, slightly drunk, snickering over the accomplishments that properly had nothing to do with either of them. How clever they had thought they were, and how funny some of those reports had been.

The flare of warmth at the thought was followed by a pain that lanced straight through him, and it made him reach for the bag he had set on the desk.

“Sit up straight, please,” he said. Medoc was so pale he was almost blue, and though there was precious little spare flesh on his frame, Aziraphale thought he could make do.

Medoc sucked in his breath when Aziraphale pinched him right over the ribs, clamping the skin between two fingers so that he could secure a clothes peg over it. Medoc flinched a little from the pain, but it wasn't so bad yet, not just one, not freshly attached.

“He did. I think about that, sometimes.”

“What do you think? Am I more like you than I should be?” Aziraphale asked absently. He pinched Medoc again, this time just under his collarbone, and he secured another clothes peg there. They jutted, slightly ridiculous, from Medoc's chest. They were what Aziraphale thought of as the newer kind, two thin splints of wood clamped tight with a coiled wire between them. They bit painfully hard if they had never been used before, and these had certainly never been used.

“I don't know,” Medoc said, his voice slightly thinner but still steady. “You're like no demon I've ever met.”

“And no angel, either?”

“I don't remember Heaven much. It's kind of a blur.”

“Pain can do that,” Aziraphale agreed. “It makes you forget. It... softens your memory to protect you.”

“Does... ah, fuck... does it always do that?”

Aziraphale added two more clothes pegs before he answered.

“I hope so,” he said, and he plucked at Medoc's nipple gently until it was tight and aching, making the demon whine.

“Don't, please don't,” he breathed, and Aziraphale smiled coldly.

“If you don't like this, I could leave,” he suggested.

Medoc's chin dropped down, and he couldn't meet Aziraphale's eyes. It wasn't a no. Aziraphale told himself that if it was a no, he would stop, but he hadn't heard a no out of Medoc yet.

He let the wooden jaws of the clothes peg snap down hard on Medoc's nipple, making him flinch back with a choked cry. His chest was heaving up and down with dazed pain, and now Aziraphale could see the hare in him, the quivering fear, the instinct to freeze and to hope the predator passed on.

Aziraphale worked a little faster, not stopping until Medoc's chest resembled a hedgehog's back. There was a clean emptiness to him now, something that made him think of high mountaintops where the air was too thin for humans. He felt steady, and he felt a kind of tenderness for Medoc that he could never otherwise reach.

By the time he was done, Medoc couldn't stop shivering, and there was a glazed look to his eyes. The demon reached tentatively for Aziraphale's hand, and Aziraphale took it. It was cold in his, and he rubbed it briskly as he looked over his work.

“I should have brought more,” he said. “I think I could fit a few more on you...”

Medoc whimpered a little.

“Good?” he asked hopefully.

“No, of course not,” Aziraphale replied. “You are a demon, why should you be good?”

Medoc crouched in on himself, or he would have if the clothespins didn't bite in when he tried to move too much. Two popped off entirely, and with a frown, Aziraphale replaced them from where they had fallen.

“I'm doing this for an angel, this makes it good, doesn't it?”

“You can think so if you like.”

Medoc swallowed hard, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. That tenderness appeared again, something that Aziraphale thought must mean this was love. Of course it was love.

He leaned in to press a cool dry kiss to Medoc's forehead, ignoring Medoc's brief cry when he grazed a few of the clothes pegs without dislodging them.

“Why should you care about being good or not?” he asked softly.

“You're an _angel,”_ Medoc said, pressing his cheek against Aziraphale's. “Shouldn't you want good things?”

“That's... a question.”

He reached up to cup the back of Medoc's head with one hand, letting his eyes drift closed. For just a moment, everything was calm. Things were all right, and there was a kind of peace here he had never felt anywhere else.

Nowhere?

No.

That wasn't true at all. He just hadn't felt it for thirty years.

Medoc shivered at the shift in Aziraphale, grabbing on to his sleeve with a desperate hand.

“Hey, no, come on. Angel, just a little more? Just... more, please?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Aziraphale lied, and he stepped back, angry that that feeling was gone, already moving towards getting it back.

“All right, let's see now, shall we?”

He ticked his fingers along the clothes pegs, glancing up to see Medoc watching him with wide eyes and an unhappy turn to his mouth.

“It's all right,” he said, just as he flicked one hard.

Medoc cried out with shock and pain as the clothes peg came half-away from him, ending up clamped painfully over a smaller and even more sensitive amount of flesh. He caught the cry between his teeth as Aziraphale flicked it again, sending it spinning to the floor with a clatter.

“Fuck, fuck, angel,_ please...”_

Aziraphale ignored him, reaching out to flick another clothes peg off. This one came off entirely with one motion, and Medoc slapped at the desk hard, doing his best not to jerk away. Aziraphale wondered what it would take to make the demon lunge for him, to fight him or even to push him away. It hadn't happened yet.

He worked slowly and unevenly. Sometimes he flicked at a clothes peg half a dozen times, and sometimes he simply struck it off all at once. He couldn't tell which one hurt Medoc more. The demon was a squirming mess of small bruises dotted with blood, his face red and his breath coming hard. He whined deep in his throat when Aziraphale ran a light hand down his chest, grazing the small intense hurts with something like gentleness.

There was only one clothes peg left, the one he had latched onto Medoc's nipple, and his hand hovered over it.

“Please. Don't. I can't, I don't want it...”

“It's fine,” Aziraphale said softly. “It's all right.”

Carefully, so carefully, he removed the clothes peg from Medoc's body, making the demon shudder and and slouch with relief, shaking uncontrollably. There was something ruined about him, and Aziraphale took a deep breath, letting the calm sink into him again.

He stepped between Medoc's spread knees, coming closer to him that he had before. He let Medoc drape his arms loosely around his body, shy and desperate all at once, and tuck his head under Aziraphale's chin.

“You're all right. There, there. You're all right.”

It was pleasant holding Medoc like this, Aziraphale thought. The demon felt good in his arms, pliant and almost sweet. The trouble was that it was so sweet that it made him want-

“Open your mouth,” Aziraphale said. “Stick out your tongue.”

Medoc started to cry, tears dripping down his face and off his chin to stain Aziraphale's shirt. He was utterly silent when he cried, something that could twist Aziraphale's heart to pieces if he let it, so he ignored it now, waiting patiently until Medoc did as he was told.

Aziraphale clamped the clothes peg on the tip of Medoc's tongue, making him whine in a panic at the pain. Aziraphale guessed it hurt quite a lot, and it would hurt more when the time came to take it off.

“All right. Thank you.”

With a touch to Medoc's chin, Aziraphale closed his mouth gently, the ends of the clothes peg sticking out beyond his lips. The calm and the tenderness filled him again, and now he could wrap his arms around Medoc comfortingly, rubbing his back, letting the demon sob with desperate need, pain, and craving.

“All right, come on. Let's put you to bed.”

***

And so they went all the way through 1900.

Aziraphale spent more time with Medoc than he ever had with Crowley. He didn't sleep, but Medoc did, and Medoc often needed to sleep after they had spent time together. It was endearing the way the demon curled up impossibly tight, one arm slung around Aziraphale's waist as if he could prevent him from leaving. Aziraphale would read sitting up in the bed, and occasionally stroking Medoc's hair or murmuring quietly to him when he whimpered or thrashed. He found the rabbit tattoo on the back of Medoc's neck, and he didn't try to scratch it off for not being a snake.

He supposed he was doing the angelic equivalent of a week-long bender, holed up in some discreet hotel with someone who looked too much like the one he lost. He was keeping himself insensible on a steady drip of what he had decided to call love, and even at his most besotted, Aziraphale knew it couldn't last. It didn't, and it ended sooner than he thought it would.

In January of 1901, Queen Victoria died, and the entire nation plunged into a sudden and wild grief. It started as a trickle with the notice posted at Osborne House on the Isle of Man, and it reached a crescendo as the newspapers in London got a hold of it. A spiritual shriek of panic, fear and loss rose up towards Heaven, and Aziraphale and Medoc both jerked up in Medoc's bed.

“What in the name of Satan-?”

“Be _quiet_,” Aziraphale said, because he had heard the whisper of something else, a single voice picked almost by chance out of the clamor that surrounded them. It was there and gone so fast he might have imagined it, but he was never the one with the imagination.

_Huh? Whatsit? What's all the bloody commotion, can't a demon get a decent nap? Oh bugger all of you, 'm going back t'bed..._

Asleep, he had been _asleep, _oh great Heaven, Aziraphale was going to wring his damned neck the next time he saw him, only _asleep!_

He was out of bed and starting for the door before he knew it, but Medoc was after him in a heartbeat, grabbing his sleeve.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” Aziraphale said as if the answer was obvious. “I have work that I have been neglecting.”

Medoc bit his lip as if suddenly aware how naked he was and how clothed Aziraphale was. It bothered him at the oddest times.

“Will you... that is, will we-”

“No, not at all,” Aziraphale replied, “and I think perhaps you ought to get back down to Hell, my boy. The Serpent of Eden is less slain than previously thought, and you have been made redundant.”

Medoc flinched, but still he didn't let go of Aziraphale's sleeve.

“Stay,” he said. “Stay, just a little, please...”

Aziraphale glanced up and down Medoc's body where he could still see the marks from the heavy prison strap. They were vivid red, like bright slaps of paint against the demon's skin. He had taken them rather well, barely screaming at all.

“Oh, of course. Here.”

Aziraphale snapped his fingers and Medoc staggered. The welts were gone, his skin whole. He let go of Aziraphale then. He looked gutted, running an incredulous hand down his unmarred, uninjured flesh.

“Angel...”

“There you are, you're all right now,” Aziraphale said briskly.

Medoc tried to smile at him, an utterly unhappy twitch of his lips.

“I feel like I should be asking for my severance pay,” he said at last.

Aziraphale made an impatient gesture.

“Medoc, you were not my whore. Everything we did together was for love. Now are we quits?”

Medoc nodded, not meeting his eyes.

“Yes, angel.”

Aziraphale nodded and turned towards the door.

Outside, the winter night was just beginning to turn over into morning, There was a killing cold in the air that made Aziraphale shiver for form's sake. In the night, a handful of people would have died of the chill, and more would die yet before spring finally came. Victoria was dead, it was the end of an era, and the century ahead was lit with strange lights.

None of it mattered, or perhaps it all mattered again, because Crowley was _alive._

_***_

The silence in bookshop was absolute.

Aziraphale had refused to tell the story in bed, and so they sat facing each other in the shop, untouched cups of tea in their hands. Crowley was as still as a rock, utterly unreadable, and Aziraphale took a deep breath.

“I know now it wasn't love at all-”

“That _dumb fucking bunny,” _Crowley spat.

“Er?”

“He read the reports! He told you himself he did! Read my damn reports, and then comes waltzing up to you at a _sex_ _club_-”

“It was _not _a sex club, Crowley!”

“Oh, come off it, angel, I know what goes on at those places. And he come waltzing up to you like some innocent little shop boy hoping for a thrill...”

Crowley got up and started pacing, setting his still-full tea cup on the mantel, shaking his head.

“Stupid, _stupid _thing, thinking he could get close to you. He would have been better off if you had just discorporated him on the spot.”

Aziraphale winced.

“Likely. Crowley...”

“I _will _kill him if he comes sniffing around here again,” Crowley growled. “I mean it. If he ever crawls out of Belphagor's bed again, if he even _thinks _about-”

“Crowley.”

Crowley looked up at him, sharp-toothed and eyes bright and livid.

“Crowley, are you truly angry at poor Medoc?”

“I don't like your saying his name,” Crowley snapped. “You touched him. You kissed him. You were in his _bed, _how well do you think he's going to survive it if I ever lay eyes on him again?”

Aziraphale set down his own tea and wrapped Crowley in his arms. Perhaps they shouldn't have left the bed after all. Crowley struggled half-heartedly, and then growled, resting his sharp chin on Aziraphale's shoulder.

“Words, please, Crowley.”

“I hate Medoc, and I want to see him shredded to little bits.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“All right. Is that all?”

“_You _may be all gracious about what I've done and wanted in the past, but I'm not an angel, angel. _I _don't have to be gracious at all, and I hate the fact that you touched him, even if it was with a bloody strap or clothes pegs...”

“And a cane, and a knife, and birches, and ropes, and holy water...”

Crowley drew his breath hard, leaning back to stare at Aziraphale in undisguised horror.

“You used _holy water_ on him?”

Aziraphale smiled thinly.

“He thought it was, anyway. Now tell me what the matter is.”

“I don't want to do that kind of thing with you,” Crowley said, sounding stricken. “Letter openers, clothes pegs, tricks with holy water, I... I don't like it. I don't _want _it.”

Aziraphale hugged him tightly, both to comfort him and to make sure that he didn't squirm away.

“That's fine,” he said calmly. “We won't.”

“But you want to, don't you.”

“Sometimes. I want a great many things. I want the gavotte to come back, and it's not going to.”

“Angel...”

“No, it's the truth. The gavotte is never coming back. Darling, it's all right for me to want things. I want _so_ many things. I am fortunate enough that I get most of the things I want, and I am lucky beyond all measure that I have what I always wanted most.”

Crowley looked at him hopefully, his eyes honey.

“Me?” he asked in the softest voice.

“You,” Aziraphale replied, kissing him gently on the forehead.

Crowley sighed, uncoiling back into something like sanity. Aziraphale still didn't want to let him go, so Crowley ended up straddling his lap in the armchair again, leaned up against Aziraphale's body.

“I don't think I want to hear any more stories,” he said finally.

“Oh? There's one more.”

“S'all right. I shouldn't have pried.”

“I want to tell you this one.”

Crowley shivered, and Aziraphale hugged him a little tighter.

“'Kay.”

“It's all right. This one's different, I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Medoc had a whole speech prepared when Aziraphale came into the Green Room, and then he got a face full of what Aziraphale was putting out when he thought Crowley was back. I figure Crowley's had some time to get used to Aziraphale; Medoc didn't really have much of a chance. 
> 
> *Fairest and Fallen are titles that I swiped and corrupted from Diane Duane, and I use them slightly differently over in the universe next door, where Gabriel is a lot different and may be considering a bit of angelic treason.  
*The first part of this fic takes place at the Hundred Guineas Club, an exclusive gay club in Victorian London where the patrons all take on women's names. 
> 
> *Hares were once as common as cats as witch's familiars!
> 
> *Yeah, there's probably 3000 words somewhere where Aziraphale and Crowley just bloody ruin Medoc. Not pretty.
> 
> *It's been mentioned a few times in this series that Crowley's not actually a masochist. He likes a lot of sensation, things that come right to the edge of too much, and he's all right if the pain's for a purpose, but he's not got any interest in pain for pain's sake.


	4. Chapter 4

_1169 A.D _

_Duchy of Aquitaine_

“Crowley, please, explain it to me properly. I'm sure I don't understand it at all.”

Aziraphale couldn't keep the slightly hapless tone out of his voice. If he were entirely honest, it was at least a little bit of a put-on. He was an angel after all, and very little was beyond his understanding so long as it didn't involve dancing or the heads of pins.

However, if he got it on the first try, Crowley wouldn't explain it to him, and Crowley loved to explain things.

Crowley grinned, teeth flashing in the dim tavern light and eyes covered by smoked quartz lenses all the way from Guangzhou. The trade routes were open again, and people were wearing all sorts of things; he barely looked out of place at all.

“It's damned brilliant, angel, is what it is. Look. All right. So ever since that patriarchy stuff started up a while back, about half the population's gotten shackled up and ordered to cover their hair and to keep their genitals to themselves, right?”

“Women, yes.”

“Mostly, yeah. And it doesn't stop that half from mostly wanting the other half and the other half from mostly wanting them. You still following?”

Aziraphale huffed.

“Patriarchy was Heaven's idea, you know. Of course I understand it. It's for the betterment of... of...” He trailed off, swallowing a little and looking down into his mug. “Oh, I'm sorry, this mead is rather good, it has slipped my mind for the moment.”

“Don't worry, I know what you're trying to say,” Crowley said kindly. “All right, so on one side, we have yearning, and on the _other _side we have yearning, and what does that lead to?”

“.... Great unhappiness, disloyalty, battered family relations, and generational trauma?” Aziraphale muttered it so softly that Heaven probably couldn't hear, but Crowley clapped him on the shoulder.

“Yes! _Exactly_, and I looked at all of that, and thought... how in the world could I improve on it?”

Aziraphale made a face.

“I'm not sure it needs-”

“So courtly love. It's _all _yearning. No touching, no kissing, no clandestine little trysts in the barn. It's songs and gestures and declarations, _performance, _angel. It's yearning in the open, right in the face of marriage and the frowning husbands and the laws of the Church and God Herself!”

“But, er, what happens when that yearning breaks the dam, so to speak?” asked Aziraphale dubiously. He may not have been altogether too keen himself, but he wasn't some fledgling. He had been around for the very first bit of yearning after all, and look at where that had led to.

“That's the brilliant thing about this,” Crowley said gleefully. “The way your lot sets it up, the dam _does_ break, and then you learn who people really are, right? Whether they're going to forgive and submit, or whether they go off in a fit and kill a rather lot of uninvolved people.”

Aziraphale winced and nodded.

“Here's the thing, angel. Even if it's a big smash-up, it doesn't last. In the rules of courtly love, however, the dam _never _breaks. That's the whole point. If it's _real _love, you just go on yearning forever.”

He paused, and Aziraphale was a little too soused to tell if there was something changed in his voice.

“If you're just yearning forever, you stay safe...” Crowley coughed. “And, ah, of course you keep up all that stuff you weren't talking about, the generational trauma and great unhappiness and all. An enormous victory for my side.”

Aziraphale considered it.

“I see how it works in theory,” he said at last. “But I rather think you have created an engine for good instead of evil.”

Crowley scowled.

“Have not. I'm a demon. I don't do good.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“Of course you don't, but you do make mistakes.”

“This isn't one of them,” Crowley insisted. “Look, you don't get it. Let me explain it to you again...”

“No, no, I have it now. Two people that want each other cannot be together. Instead of hiding these feelings and letting it all come out in a torrent, they speak these feelings out loud, one chasing after the other, knowing that it will come to nothing.”

“Right, you _do _have it.”

“I do. And what's so terrible about people being honest? What could possibly be evil about love that speaks, love that declares, love that is... offered, if not taken?”

He wondered why there was a lump at the back of his throat. It felt like rock salt, dissolving slowly into seawater.

“Because it keeps the system going,” Crowley said, oddly bitter. “Like a great blessed wheel. Your side set the thing to spinning, and you don't even look at the evil it throws up. When that dam breaks, as you put it, everything comes out, and people reveal their real natures, saints or monsters. There are usually more monsters than saints, but believe you me that Hell doesn't at all like missing out on the possibility of grabbing those saints. If the dam never breaks, sure, you get love declared and love offered... but it'll never be accepted. Never's a long time for a human, you know. Time to get corrupted. Time to hit the servants when things don't go your way, time to think about how your spouse really doesn't measure up to the one singing you pretty songs and comparing your eyes to currently aesthetic subjects.”

Crowley snorted, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Humans are silly things. They'll spend their whole lives yearning after something they can't have. Idiots, really.”

Aziraphale became aware of a strange fire licking at his heart. He didn't _like _it when Crowley spoke like this for some reason. It made him want to reach over, tangle his hand in Crowley's hair, press his face against the stained table, not hard, no, but enough so that Crowley couldn't rise and-

He took another hasty gulp of his mead. It was only frustrating that Crowley could be so cruel sometimes.

“I think you are wrong. Your little invention is going to show people more at their best than their worst.”

“That's you, angel. Always hoping for the best,” said Crowley, dripping false sympathy. “Always so very shocked when it doesn't happen.”

“Sometimes it does,” Aziraphale muttered. Sometimes it did.

“You're so sure of my genius blowing up in my face, then? Care to put your money where your too-pretty mouth is?”

“My mouth is of a perfectly average aesthetic quality,” Aziraphale said firmly. “And what are you talking about?”

“Oh, I was thinking of something like a bet. If you think it's so _good, _there should be nothing wrong with an angel engaging in courtly love while he's in Aquitaine, is there?”

Aziraphale was struck with a sensation of something sleek, scaled, and muscular coiling around him.

“I am an angel,” he said with conviction. “I am made of love.”

“Then show it,” Crowley said with a touch of cruelty. “Let's try it out, just the two of us. That should give us some proof of concept either way, shouldn't it?”

Aziraphale considered. It was only words and gestures. According to Crowley, they wouldn't even really touch. It would be more a play than anything real. It would hardly be more than they were doing now, would it, and if he were being truthful, which he seldom was, there was something about Crowley's little invention that intrigued him.

“What kind of bet did you have in mind?” he asked cautiously. From the grin on Crowley's face, they both knew that he had as good as agreed.

“I was thinking we'd put up Eleanor's boy, Richard,” Crowley said, too casual. “Winner takes the future king, loser promises not to go near him.”

Aziraphale hesitated. The entire Plantagenet clan was more tied up with destiny than anyone in Heaven liked. He imagined that Hell had gotten the same signs and portents. Royals in general and Plantagenets in particular were best regarded as unexploded ordnance, that is to say, hands off, but you certainly didn't want the other side getting their hands on. Destiny or not, Richard was still so young. With the right influence, he could go any number of ways.

_I might lose. But... if I win and Crowley stays away..._

“All right,” he said decisively. “We try your brilliant new invention for a year. At the end, we tally the good and the evil. The winner takes Richard. The loser buys drinks for the next hundred years.”

“All right, angel, sly of you sneaking that last part in, but I _do_ like being bought drinks. Shall we get started right away? I'm feeling so pleased with myself for pulling this one off that I'll arrange for the introduction of the Lady Aalis at court before I bop off to find myself some armor-”

“Why would you do that?” asked Aziraphale.

Crowley froze, and Aziraphale frowned. There was... something... nibbling at the back of his mind, something that made him more uneasy than he could easily understand, and wherever it came from, it told him in no uncertain terms that he could not be the beloved in this simulation. Could not allow it.

“I don't care for the French fashion,” he said, looking away. “Those bliauts, honestly, laced so tightly that... well. It's hardly going to be flattering on me.”

“I think it would be quite fetching, actually,” offered Crowley. “But... er. You know that that means you're meant to be the pursuer, yes? The active one, the hunter. Wait, _did _you actually understand it? Angel, let me explain again...”

“I _do _understand,” Aziraphale snapped. “I love you. I tell you, constantly and openly. You turn me down while making it clear that it is through no fault of my own, that we would be together if the world were different. You send me away. I come back. Is that correct?”

Crowley shut his mouth and nodded.

“Good. Then I shall give you two weeks to get yourself properly situated at court, and you shall give me two weeks to ensure my armor and sword are in good condition. Then we shall start. Do you agree?”

It took Crowley a moment to find his voice for some reason, and when he spoke there was some dry and oddly wounded about it.

“Angel, I do.”

*****

The tournament at Rouen was the first of the season,. With the peace treaty signed between Louis and Henry that January, the first thing that the nobles on both sides of the channel they decided wanted was recreational warfare. Aziraphale would have liked to pretend that he didn't understand, but he remembered Heaven after the Fall, and he had heard rumors about what went on in Hell afterward as well. Wars ended, but the strange fires they left burning in the heart took longer to extinguish.

He could feel something burning low and banked in his own heart as well as he took his place in the lists. He had formed no allegiances with the knights of his side. They eyed his slightly out-date-armor and the somewhat shabby horse he rode, and none of them offered to watch his back or to sortie with him at the sound of the bugle.

_That's just fine, _he thought. _Certainly no one on this field is going to give me a problem._

He was more interested in the sheltered box set back from the field. The nobles had finally assembled. At this distance, he could make out proud Eleanor and her daughter Marie, and with them the ladies of their court at Poitiers, the fairest in the land in song and story if not in fact. Aziraphale frowned at not spotting a familiar flash of red, but then he saw black instead, a woman stood slightly apart in a jet-black gown, her face covered with a black veil.

_There you are, _he said, and something inside him sang.

Then the bugle called, the tournament was joined, and Aziraphale, reminded of who he was doing this for, turned his horse towards the thickest part of the fight.

In later years, the melee became more civilized. There would be less blood, more rules, and less screaming. However, it was 1169, and when there was a man on a horse charging at you with a lance, there was only one way to respond.

It would have been unsporting in the extreme to use miracles on a field of battle against humans, so he decided to abstain. Besides, Crowley could sense miracles, and that meant that he would _fail to impress, _and _that_ simply wouldn't do. After all, Aziraphale decided, five thousand years of battlefield experience, the invention of the cavalry, and native angelic strength should see him through, and largely, it did.

Aziraphale hit the enemy line a few yards ahead of his side, and it shattered around him like glass, men shouting, the poor horses screaming. His lance broke at the first pass, and then it was permissible to draw the blunted sword he had been given for the occasion.

_Not very much like a real battle at all, _Aziraphale thought, though the chaos was familiar. The press of bodies and the smell of blood on the grass gave him the same creeping horror it always had, but he had been, after all, made for war, and play or not, it sent a thrill through him. It was a feeling of rightness that shied away from being righteousness, but just barely.

Maybe there was a part of him that _liked_ this, and maybe here on the field of Rouen, aware that Crowley's eyes were on him, finding him no matter how deeply he was in the crush, maybe that was all right.

Aziraphale could have brought down the entire field in the space of a heartbeat, but again, that wasn't the point. The point was to strike with his sword, to feel the few blows that made it through his guard, and to let the enemy break itself against him.

The point was that Crowley was _watching._

The bugle sounded three times, and Aziraphale pulled up in surprise. The sun was setting, men were being carted off the field by their squires, and there was thunderous applause from the crowds. He looked over to the box where the noblewomen were watching, and he was disappointed to see Crowley sitting with his- her, he supposed, best get into the habit now- with her face close to Eleanor's own, whispering something or other.

_If that doesn't impress her, I will do better tomorrow, _he decided.

That night at the feast, Aziraphale was slightly startled to find himself awarded a wreath of laurels made out of beaten gold.

“For the bravest knight on the field,” said Eleanor, as he came to take it from her hand.

Even as he thanked the queen for the honor, he had a flash to another gold wreath and how lovely it had looked on red hair.

He held the wreath gingerly in his hands. The hall went silent around him when he did not return to his seat. Aziraphale knew that he should be making some kind of speech, some kind of declaration here, but oh, it was rather too much, wasn't it? He would make a fool out of himself, and he didn't think he could bear it. He would rather be back out on the field than trying to make a _speech_, and in the end, he only shook his head and turned to where Crowley sat, still veiled, at Eleanor's side.

He kept his gaze firmly fixed on the ground, and he laid the gold wreath on the table in front of Crowley. The crowd roared its approval as he hurried back to his seat, and through the tumult, he heard Eleanor chuckle softly.

“What mischief is this, Chréstienne? Did you tell me to grant him that honor knowing it would come home to you? What a terrible woman you are.”

Aziraphale's heart beat harder, and he covered the shock at that revelation by taking a drink from the flagon someone shoved in his hand.

She had been watching after all, watching _him, _watching every blow he struck, every blow he took.

He felt too hot, he felt cold. He wanted her, and in that moment, he could have snapped his fingers and sent the entire damned court straight to the frozen steppes so that he could be alone with her.

He might have done it too, if he hadn't looked up at where Crowley sat on the dais, his golden wreath in her still hands, her head bowed and her veil giving nothing away.

_No, _came a surer voice. _That's not how you love her. That's not how you love Crowley right this minute. Play by the rules Crowley gave you._

He was an angel. He was good at rules. Aziraphale let his mind linger on the idea of pulling that veil aside and gliding his fingers along Crowley's thin pale neck, and then he put those thoughts away. He was meant to be loving Crowley differently this year.

He wondered for the first time how many ways there were to love the demon, because he did, oh he did, so very much.

Perhaps Crowley would show him more ways if he did well with this one, and the thoughts of bruised flesh and broken skin dimmed even further in his mind.

***

“1169?” Crowley demanded. “1169 was a fucking _nightmare! _I ended it crying my eyes out, and I shipped myself straight to Abydos. Stayed there until the century was out because I was so upset.”

Aziraphale winced, stroking Crowley's hair as if he were smoothing down ruffled feathers.

“I know,” he said. “We were... well. We weren't ready for that, were we?”

Crowley sat up in bed to give him a dire look.

“I invented courtly love because I sort of hated myself for loving you, and then you decided to turn everything upside down by being, well, _you_ when you were pretending to be me.”

“What a terrible thing it is, to be me,” Aziraphale said dryly, and Crowley smacked him gently on the arm.

“It was, back then,” he insisted. “There _I_ was, trying to get your attention, trying to make you notice me, trying everything short of setting myself on fire to get you to consider the Arrangement, and then _you_ show up and start winning tournaments for me, singing for me, obeying me every time I sent you away and still coming back...You're fucking _terrible_, angel.”

He paused.

“Is that why you liked it?” he asked, his voice smaller. “Because it was turning me inside out?”

Aziraphale considered, because it was a fair question, and then he shook his head.

“No, love. I didn't know. You'd set the rules. You agreed to them. I thought, if anything, you were having a laugh at my expense. Really, you did make me so ridiculous a few times. I might as well ask if you liked humiliating me at Bordeaux.”

Crowley grinned.

“Bordeaux was _hot,” _he purred. “No, I did not mind Bordeaux at all.”

“Well, there. It wasn't all so bad, was it?” There was a plaintive note Aziraphale couldn't keep out of his voice, and Crowley took his hand, squeezing it gently between his own.

“It was,” Crowley said gently. “It hurt even when it was good, because I knew it wasn't real. But it was real for you, wasn't it? It was important to you. Tell me why.”

“Because you were showing me how many ways there were to love you. Because it _felt _like love to me, even if I didn't bite you until you bled or strike you or make you helpless. You taught me so very well, dear.”

Crowley stared at him, and Aziraphale could see his nerve break under the weight of it all. He pressed himself against Aziraphale's side, burying his face in the crook of Aziraphale's neck.

“I didn't know I was,” he muttered. “I thought... I thought I was hurting myself, maybe, or winning a victory for Hell over Heaven, or proving to you that the world was as bad as I thought it was. I didn't think I was teaching you anything.”

“You did,” Aziraphale said, planting a kiss on the top of his head. “Almost every time I met you. You still are.”

He considered, and then gently he lifted Crowley up until they were kneeling eye to eye on the bed. At some point in the last little while, he had gotten used to seeing Crowley below him, even if the demon was a bit taller than he was day to day. They both liked it, but it was probably a good time to remember that it wasn't all they liked.

“Show me how to love you best right now,” Aziraphale said quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Tournaments went through a lot of changes throughout the middle ages. By the 1300s, we're seeing all the pomp and fun of the formalized joust, sponsorship from large businesses and things like that. In the backwater of the 1100s, however, while there were more and less dangerous variations, it's still mostly just war writ small. 
> 
> *Possibly I need to write the whole of 1169 from Crowley's perspective rather than Aziraphale's. If anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I'm open to hearing them. I do know what happens at Bordeaux, at least. 
> 
> *Okay, Aziraphale is actually lying to himself a little more than usual when he thinks he's good at rules. He's good at rules he wants to follow.
> 
> *I figure that courtly love is one of those traps that Crowley sets for himself, an 'evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction' things.
> 
> *Hopefully I am explaining courtly love well enough in this one. I'm still not sure. 
> 
> *Jury's apparently still out on the extent to which anyone actually used the mechanics of courtly love in real life. Personally, I couldn't tell if it would lead to more or less awful in the world.


	5. Chapter 5

“Tell me,” Crowley murmured, slipping Aziraphale's tan coat off his shoulders. Aziraphale watched to make sure that he hung it properly off the coat rack in the corner, and when he ascertained that Crowley had, he had no excuse but to begin.

He opened his mouth, found his throat exceptionally dry, swallowed, and tried again.

“Well, of course I want to bite you,” Aziraphale said, and even in his own ears his words were unbearably prim and fussy.

“Of _course _you do,” Crowley agreed pleasantly. “How hard?”

“Very,” Aziraphale said, and his voice caught a little. “Very hard. Not... not at first. At first I would want to just graze my teeth over your skin. Maybe just...”

“Just nibble a bit?” suggested Crowley. “Just a taste?”

He took Aziraphale by the hand and led him him to the armchair he'd dragged to the center of the room, seating him on it as if it were a throne.

“More like... “ Oh it was ridiculous. He had read nearly every word ever published. He certainly had _words._

“More like I want you to know what was happening. Like I want you to be afraid.”

“Mm.”

Crowley sounded the furthest thing from afraid. He was still naked, the lean lines of his body as good as art, the light overhead picking out the stray strands of gold in his hair. Almost casually, he dropped to his knees in front of Aziraphale, watching him with a snake's unblinking calm.

“So you would make me afraid. Then what?”

“I would... I would put my mouth over the side of your throat. Right where I could feel your pulse.”

Crowley took Aziraphale's hand and brought it to nestle under his ear. Aziraphale swallowed as his thumb automatically sought and found the pulse of blood there. Crowley's eyes drifted shut as he took a long slow breath.

_Tease, _ thought Aziraphale, shifting uneasily.

“You want to tear my throat out,” Crowley murmured.

“No.”

_Yes._

“No,” he said more firmly. “I want to dig my teeth in. I want to hear you cry out, and... and I want to feel you grab at me. I want you to try to push me away.”

“I wouldn't,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale shook his head, his thumb pressing down more firmly against the vein.

“You would,” he said. “You wouldn't be able to help yourself. You'd beat at me. You'd claw me. You would be too shocked to cry out, not because you thought I would never do such a thing but because any such cry might make me want to hurt you more.”

Crowley winced, but when Aziraphale tried to pull his hand back, he held it to his throat. His pulse jumped, the rhythm still steady but faster now.

“Come on,” he said softly.

Aziraphale leaned forward, his hand moving to the nape of Crowley's neck to draw him closer. His lips found the pulse, and for a moment, Aziraphale did slide the point of his teeth against Crowley's skin. He imagined what it would be like to bite Crowley there, and then he kissed him instead.

First it was almost chaste, and then he lapped gently at the spot, nuzzling it with his lips and then sucking just a little.

_I cannot hurt him. I cannot bruise him even a little._

Instead, slowly and patiently, he kissed his way up and down Crowley's bare throat, using teeth and tongue and lips and breath to send light shudders through Crowley's frame. Instead of beating at him, Crowley clung to him, hands clutching at Aziraphale's sleeves.

Aziraphale drew back slightly when Crowley found the buttons of his waistcoat, undoing them with less grace than he had removed his coat.

“Oh, Crowley...”

“Tell me. What else did you want to do with me?”

Aziraphale nuzzled more firmly into Crowley's throat until Crowley wound his fingers through Aziraphale's hair and tugged him back a little.

“Angel, tell me.”

“I want to hit you.”

“Open-handed or with a fist?”

“... Both.”

Crowley's breath caught in his throat, and Aziraphale, faced with the reality of it, felt a little ill. Could he do such a thing? He wasn't sure. He wanted to.

“Here. Touch me.”

Given permission, Aziraphale slid his hands up up Crowley's ribs and then down his back, sending goosebumps all over that pale flesh. Crowley shivered as if he were in a chill, and after a moment's hesitation, he slid even closer to Aziraphale, kneeling up between Aziraphale's spread legs. This close, Aziraphale could bury his face in Crowley's hair and wrap his arms around him, drawling him close to find the warmth in his lean frame.

“You feel good, angel, so very good,” Crowley murmured, and for some reason, it made Aziraphale want to cry. Instead he concentrated on chasing the shivers that ran through Crowley's body, seeing what gentle touches would provoke the most dramatic reactions.

Crowley cupped Aziraphale's face between his palms, pulling back so he could look him in the eye. For some reason, it was hard to look at Crowley directly; instead, Aziraphale wanted to look down or to one side, anything but meet Crowley's gaze. When he tried to look away, however, Crowley's hand under his chin brought him back again.

“Tell me more. You didn't just want to use your hands, did you?”

“Often it's my hands,” Aziraphale said, his voice thin.

“Yes, slapping and punching... but what else?”

“Canes, I suppose. I _like_ canes. I like the sounds they make. I like the marks they leave, I like how they hit.”

“You like how they hit _me_...”

“Yes,” Aziraphale hissed, remembering at the last moment that he wasn't going to rake his nails down Crowley's back. Crowley's nails were far sharper than his own, but they didn't need to be so very sharp at all to welt fair skin or even to tear it. He settled his hands flat over Crowley's shoulder blades, where his wings would open if he let them out. Aziraphale took another deep breath.

“Yes, I love using canes on you,” Aziraphale said more calmly. “You don't like canes, even when you ask for them. You hate them. You think that you can bear the pain...”

“And I can't,” Crowley said with no shame at all. “And you wouldn't want me to, would you?”

Aziraphale shook his head and Crowley removed his waistcoat, standing to hang it on the coat rack. He couldn't quite tell if it was a reward or a punishment, but he had no wish to ask Crowley.

This time, Crowley came to sit straddling his lap, far enough back that he had plenty of room to undo Aziraphale's bow tie and to unbutton his shirt down to the middle of his chest. Aziraphale squirmed underneath him, and Crowley made an absent shushing sound.

“You're brutal with a cane,” Crowley observed. “Mean. You _like _it when it tears skin.”

“... Yes.”

Crowley slid the partially-undone shirt halfway down Aziraphale's arms but no further, effectively binding his hands down by his sides. For a moment, he was pleased to press against Aziraphale's chest, only a thin undershirt between them. Aziraphale made a kind of delayed whimpering sound, and Crowley pushed his face against the side of Aziraphale's neck

“Oh you _do _like it,” Crowley whispered into his hear. “I can tell, you know. I can tell _lots _of things. Tell me about the knife.”

At that, Aziraphale froze, and he would have ripped his favorite shirt to bits trying to get away if Crowley hadn't steadied him with hands on his shoulders.

“Tell me, love.”

“Sharp,” Aziraphale managed, shaking a little. “Sharp like my sword was sharp.”

“Blessed?”

“No!”

Crowley rewarded him by wrapping his arms around Aziraphale and holding him until he stopped shaking. Crowley didn't tell him one way or another if it was a lie, and he was grateful.

“I run it over your body,” Aziraphale said, stricken. “It's so cold and you... you hate the cold. It's so sharp you don't know that you're cut until the blood runs down your chest and your legs. Your throat. I... I cut such pretty lines into you. Shallow at first, and then deep enough that...”

“Go on.”

“That you'll have them forever. So that only a miracle would heal them.”

“Why wouldn't I heal them?”

“Because you are broken,” Aziraphale whispered. “I want you bleeding in my arms, I want you so afraid that you cannot even run or consider healing yourself. Crowley, please...”

“Keep going.”

God had more mercy than Crowley did, and it tore at something in Aziraphale.

“Crowley. Crowley, I love you, I want you...”

“Bleeding, broken, bruised, crying and suffering, just for you.”

“Mine,” Aziraphale said helplessly. “Mine, only mine...”

His entire body tingled where it touched Crowley's. His rumpled clothes made him feel more naked than naked, as if he had been caught in the middle of something terribly improper and embarrassing. There was heat on his face and spilled down his throat and chest, and he was sure that he had never been more defenseless in his life. If Crowley had wanted to slit his throat right then and there, he could have, and Aziraphale would never have seen it coming, even if he was looking straight at him while he did it.

Instead Crowley wanted something else, and as he had said he would, he pulled Aziraphale out of the chair and onto the ground in front of him. The thin rug was a poor protection for his knees, and from this angle, Aziraphale could see all the places he neglected to dust

That all mattered less than Crowley matter-of-factly stroking his own cock to hardness and then tugging Aziraphale forward firmly by the hair.

“Come on, love,” he said, and his voice shook just a little.

Once, they had gotten drunk, and Crowley explained that there was no oral sex in Hell.

“_I mean, it's Hell, of course there's no oral sex in Hell. Most demons can't even figure out that a penis isn't actually meant to be some great bloody black rooster stuck in your pants. Sex is something humans do, and most demons find it kind of weird and off-putting.”_

“_And the ones that don't?”_

_Crowley coughed._

“_It's a self-preservation thing, angel,” he said. “No one's going to let anyone else get their teeth or beak or suctorial mouth close something so soft and vulnerable as. Well. You know. It's bad news from beginning to end, and no one thinks its such a great idea._

Aziraphale leaned in, nearly overbalancing for a moment as he reached for Crowley's cock and realized that he couldn't, not with his arms still bound up in his shirt. Crowley steadied him with a hand on his shoulder, but the other hand came up to ruffle through his hair. He had to kneel up slightly and lean forward, and this his mouth was sliding along Crowley's shaft, nuzzling a little as a smear of wetness from the tip ended up on his cheek.

He lapped a long line up Crowley's cock, shivering a little as he realized all over again how very vulnerable Crowley was to him like this. Such soft skin, and this close, it wouldn't matter that Crowley was faster than he was...

“Angel,” Crowley muttered a little nervously, “I can _hear _that, you know?”

“I thought you couldn't sense love,” Aziraphale retorted, and before Crowley could say anything, Aziraphale dipped his head slightly and took the tip of Crowley's cock in his mouth. Crowley's breath left him in a rush, and Aziraphale knew that if he was looking into the demon's eyes right this moment, they would have been side to side gold. He didn't want to look into his eyes right now, however; he had other things in mind.

He liked canes and knives and blood. He also liked things in his mouth, the soft and yielding noises that he was forcing out of Crowley, the way Crowley's hands landed in his hair and didn't quite dare tug.

Aziraphale shifted a little on his knees, finding a more stable position, and now he took Crowley a little deeper, his eyes drifting closed as he made a slight swallowing motion. There was a red edge around his thoughts, and he was too aware of his own teeth and how good they felt just brushing against Crowley's skin.

He concentrated instead on keeping his mouth as soft as a bird dog's, setting aside the need to breathe as he took in more of Crowley's cock, making small swallowing motions to help him. Crowley whimpered softly, shifting from foot to foot, and he started to rock a little, encouraging Aziraphale to take more.

It was gentle, almost kind, if Crowley wouldn't have sulked fiercely at the word. It was good, it was sweet, it was love.

Aziraphale felt something shift inside him, and he leaned in further, greedy in a way he hadn't been before. No wonder the demons in hell were wary of this act. It was a kind of devouring after all, a kind of ownership. Right now, he felt as if he owned Crowley, and every gasp and moan he drew from the demon reassured him of this fact.

He worked Crowley's cock with his lips and his mouth, and when the tip of his cock threatened to trigger Aziraphale's gag reflex, he got rid of his gag reflex with a single thought. He wanted Crowley to thrust deeper and harder, wanted him to lose himself utterly in how Aziraphale could make him feel.

There was a moment when Crowley tried to resist him, wanted to continue pushing into his mouth with the same kind of dreamy sweetness. The moment after that, however, perhaps when Aziraphale's throat swallowed around the tip of his cock, perhaps when Aziraphale growled around it, Crowley broke. His fingers tightened with painful insistence in Aziraphale's hair, and now he was pushing in hard, the strokes deep and as brutal as he had claimed Aziraphale could be.

His motions would have choked Aziraphale if Aziraphale had any interest in being choked, and they would have been humiliating if Aziraphale had any interest in being humiliated. Instead, he was focused on the pleasure that Crowley could no longer even begin to deny. It was fast and sloppy and crude, and Aziraphale didn't care. He _cared_ about the helpless way that Crowley loved him and loved this, and how right now, there was nothing in the world for Crowley except the angel kneeling at his feet.

Crowley shouted, grinding his cock deep into Aziraphale's mouth. When he came, there was nothing voluntary about it, and Aziraphale swallowed greedily, hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food or even with sex.

He remembered himself, pulling back when Crowley pushed frantically on his shoulders. Crowley dropped heavily to his knees, leaning into Aziraphale's body as if it was the only thing that would save him.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck, fucking... fuck, angel.”

Aziraphale primly licked his lips as he absently started to breathe again. He felt a bit dreamy, a touch out of his own skin. He felt very much in love.

“A little help, please, at least with my shirt?” he asked.

He noted with satisfaction that Crowley's hands shook as they pulled his shirt back up on his shoulders. He was hopeless at doing up the buttons, however, so Aziraphale brushed his hands aside to do them himself before fussily knotting his bow tie

“Can you spare me for a moment, my dear?” he asked, and Crowley nodded.

“Just for a moment, though.”

“Of course.”

Aziraphale went to the coat tree where he put his waistcoat back on, but the coat he brought back to Crowley and draped over his shoulders. Crowley jumped a little at the weight, but then he shrugged deeper into it, sighing with pleasure.

“I like it,” he said as Aziraphale tugged him to his feet. “Smells like you. 'S warm like you are.”

“I can't think of who else it would smell like.”

He brought Crowley to sit on the sofa, allowing him to curl up under his arm. He thought that he might fall asleep, but instead Crowley sighed softly.

“I love that you're like this,” he said quietly. “I do. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do.”

Aziraphale smiled, dragging his nails lightly along Crowley's scalp.

“How lucky for me.”

“I don't... I don't hate all of it, y'know,” Crowley said a little anxiously. “I like it. Some of it. Sometimes.”

Aziraphale frowned.

“You don't have to like any of it at all,” he said. “You could tell me you never wanted me to touch you again, and that would be fine. It wouldn't change how I felt about you in the least.”

“Ugh, no. I want you to touch me all the time. Sometimes it can be mean. Just...”

“Yes?”

“Angel... please don't hurt me.”

“Never,” Aziraphale said immediately, and he pulled Crowley into his arms, holding him tightly until the shaking stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *(rubs face) Just finished watching Killing Eve, and I realized that Villanelle, the amoral assassin, uses more or less the same definition of love that I have Aziraphale using in this fic. I may have fucked th' hell up somewhere.
> 
> *Thanks to this fic, I learned about suctorial mouths. They're the ones on lampreys, and they are nightmarish. 
> 
> *This one (this whole fic) was weirdly hard to do. I don't think I ever really got comfortable at all.
> 
> *If anyone has any questions about this one, I'm taking 'em. Still chewing over it, I think.
> 
> *Next up, probably either a year of twelfth century courtly love or some stuff with Medoc, unsure which. 
> 
> *If you've read the whole thing, thank you for making it this far!


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